2012 Reading Challenge Wrap-Up

Each year I join a few challenges to encourage myself to stretch into a variety of genres, formats and it’s fun to take part in a community experience. I did well in most of the 2012 challenges and finished all except one.

Read Dystopia

Success! I committed to the Leader of Your District level: 7-10 books, and finished with 7 books read and I’ll be finishing up the 8th one this week. I’ve always enjoyed science fiction but I’m also finding myself more drawn to dystopian books.

The Stephen King Project

I chose A Lil Bit of King: 3 books. I did read three books but only reviewed two of them. I listened to The Gunslinger as an audiobook and had a terrible time following the plot. I think this is a book I need to read again in print so I can understand what the heck happened.

TBR Pile Challenge

Fail! The goal was to select 12 books from your TBR pile that had been there for a year or more and read them in 2012. Sounds simple but I didn’t read any of them! I read over 100 books in 2012 and not one from the list I made for this challenge. I did learn something from this challenge: I can’t choose what I will feel like reading a year in advance. My mood changes and what I thought I would read back in December wasn’t what I wanted a few months later. Plus all those shiny new books are much more alluring. I need a more flexible TRB challenge.

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19 Comments

You did very well! You are a complete audio-convert now, aren’t you? In fact, you probably listen to more audios than you read paper books.

What was your favorite dystopia (or is that another post)? I want to read The Dog Stars but I think it’s not quite as good as I imagine. The Age of Miracles was fun, but also not quite as good as I hoped. I LOVED The Hunger Games.

I also did the What’s in a Name challenge and passed. Yay! My challenge post will be on my blog tomorrow (it’s written and ready to go).

I may sign up for a book or two in the war through generations challenge. I like to try different challenges each year, and I like history plus I have a copy of The Art of Power that I need a little motivation to read.

It surprised me because I wasn’t familiar with the author. What an excellent book!

It’s a different type of mystery: who are the characters, really? What are their motives, really? What happened to Justin, really?

Although this book is billed as a YA novel, a style that always bores me, Miller uses language and suspense in THE YEAR OF THE GADFLY that appeals to me. It is surely a novel for adults.

I have only two problems with this book: Miller’s descriptions of two “initiations.” The first happens to Lily, a student at the school. The gathering she attends beforehand and the initiation are so maddening and, I thought, unreal, that I could barely read about them. Even after that evening is over, Lily still insists it was her choice. This small part was too YAish for me.

The second initiation description involves Iris, another student over a decade later. It almost made me throw the book against the wall until Iris suddenly gets smart.

But these two parts are not enough to make me dislike the book. I’m just hoping one of these days Miller will rewrite those parts.

No official TBR pile challenges for me this year. I do have a personal goal of reading a few of those from the 2012 list because they really are books I want to read. What’s in a Name is too much fun not to enter!

Thank you so much for being a part of The Stephen King Project! I’m thinking of making it an ongoing celebration/project/challenge because it just motivates me to read more 🙂 Happy Holidays to you and yours, Leslie!

That’s a great idea. Although I’ve been reading King’s books for years, there are still a lot more I haven’t read. I could use the motivation too. If you continue the challenge I’ll do another ‘bit of King’.